The Story of ThousandEyes
ThousandEyes started with a small grant and scavenging servers from recycle bins. Now, we're part of Cisco. Here's our story.
It Started With a Bet
Back in the late 2000s at the UCLA Internet Research Lab, then Ph.D. students Mohit Lad and Ricardo Oliveira made a bet on the future of business. They believed that the Internet was on its way to becoming the new enterprise backbone, and that it would become the medium by which every company would conduct its business—how money would exchange hands, how applications and services would get delivered to customers, how employees would communicate with each other.
They knew that if they were right, businesses would be opening themselves up to an incredible amount of risk because they’d be relying on the Internet. You know, that thing that happens to be an unregulated, highly distributed collection of independent networks that operates on a chain of trust and is rife with bad actors. Worse, they knew these businesses would have no visibility into—and no control over—the Internet, the vast majority of the service delivery chain that their most mission-critical applications, services, and websites would take to get to their customers and employees.
Mohit and Ricardo also knew that businesses would need an entirely new kind of network and infrastructure monitoring software: one that could see beyond a company’s internal network and into the very complex and massive system that is the Internet. They would need to see every handoff from one provider to the next—to know, with certainty, that their services were getting delivered to their customers or employees, and that they were delivering the highest quality digital experiences possible. And even before something would go wrong, they would need the ability to instantly see exactly where the delivery chain was breaking so they could fix it, fast, before it started impacting their revenue, damaging their brand reputation, or halting their employee productivity.
From Concept to Reality
In 2010, after spending years researching the way the Internet works and how to measure it, they won a modest grant from the National Science Foundation that gave them just enough to bootstrap the business, buy a few used servers, and in true Silicon Valley fashion) set up shop in a garage in Mountain View. So began ThousandEyes on its journey to becoming the “Google Maps for the Internet,” the Internet visibility platform that the world’s biggest brands and fastest growing startups rely on to ensure they’re delivering the best possible digital experiences.
Our People Are Our 'Secret Sauce'
Mohit and Ricardo will be the first to tell you that central to ThousandEyes’ success today is the diverse and talented team they were lucky enough to build (and continue to build!) around them. A team that is obsessed with solving the most complex problems with simple solutions, and a team who always, unfalteringly, puts the customer first. People who are authentic, humble, and like to have fun.
We're a Trusted Partner
Today, 180 of the Fortune 500 are ThousandEyes customers, as are 360+ of the Global 2000, 10 of the top 10 US banks, 8 of the top 10 global software companies and hundreds more. Credit Suisse, one of the world’s largest investment banks, named ThousandEyes one of just five technologies it considered to be disruptive to traditional IT technology. For digital enterprises relying on cloud and Internet, ThousandEyes provides customers with unparalleled visibility and insights into digital experiences from every cloud to every employee and customer. ThousandEyes’ unmatched distribution of vantage points throughout the Internet, deliver the only collectively powered view of the Internet helping enterprises and service providers work together to improve the quality of every digital experience.
... And Trusted Experts
In the years since its founding, ThousandEyes has amassed the industry’s largest data set based on an increasing number of globally distributed vantage points that continually measure performance and experience from users to applications, wherever they are. The company has become the recognized expert and leader in Internet research, Internet outage analyses, and has consistently advocated for better intelligence to see, understand, and improve digital experiences everywhere. Prior to its acquisition by Cisco in August of 2020, it was backed by world-class investors, including Sequoia Capital, Google Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. Now with Cisco, ThousandEyes is on an undeniable trajectory of growth solving a global problem that impacts nearly every enterprise on Earth.
Great Place to Work
ThousandEyes is a certified Great Place to Work, with regional, national, and international recognition.
